2 Feb 2011

Do you speak NGOish?

Economist has a fun take on the impact of international NGOs in Sudan.

It seems that it is fast becoming a place:

where the language of aid is taking hold even among the natives.“I feel like a stakeholder now,” exclaimed a woman of the Dinka tribe

Other popular words include empowerment, capacity building and focal groups !

The article continues in the same vein:

Such terms’ joy is that they are nice and woolly, hard to define and harder still to contradict: who could possibly turn down the chance to enhance development practitioners’ facilitation skills for the capacity-building of gender-disadvantaged women?

Having worked on various media projects with civil society groups that focus on capacity building and empowerment, I am intrigued by the term gender-disadvantaged women.

Either there are gender disadvantaged groups or disadvantaged women.

Or am I missing something here ?

PS In other news Omar Abdullah is spending Rs 3,000 cr on development projects in 64 days !